THE SURVIVOR

One of Keneally's lesser known works, this is a hard book to warm up to. It concerns Alec Ramsey, an academic who has nursed decades-long guilt over his survival of an Antarctic expedition and the death of its esteemed leader, Stephen Leeming. James Wright's reading is intelligent and appropriately acerbic when it needs to be, but he can't do what Keneally does not, which is to create sympathetic characters. Ramsey, his wife, and Leeming's widow all are too locked into their own truths to prove generous towards others, a remoteness Wright amply demonstrates but can't overcome. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/ JUL 04]